S51episode 8 part 1 - A Dose of Hope / A Dose of Greed

S51 episode 8 / November 18, 2017

“In 1971, almost half a century ago, emergency rooms started reversing opioid overdoses using a medicine called naloxone. It's generic today, and industry insiders told us it can cost as little as a nickel a dose to produce.

In April, in response to the national opioid crisis, the U.S. surgeon general came out with an advisory calling on more Americans to carry naloxone: elderly patients on painkillers, bartenders and librarians, mothers with addicted children and children with addicted mothers. But making naloxone accessible - getting it to those who need it - is complicated.”

Drug companies jacking up the price of life-saving medications can seem arbitrary, cruel, and even scandalous. The infamous CEO Martin Shkreli hiked the price of Daraprim, a drug used by AIDS patients to fend off infections, from $13.50 To $750 for one pill. The company Mylan raised the cost of the Epipen that reverses anaphylactic shock caused by allergies 500%, from $100 to $600.

Harm reduction and opioid overdoses

November 8, 2018 - In the Hive —Today on the show: What does harm reduction mean for at-risk communities? Angela Stander Ito, opioid overdose prevention coordinator at the Utah Department of Health, shares a few reasons overdose deaths are down among Utahns; Patrick Rezac, founder and executive director of One Voice Recovery, explains how education about drug use and self harm reduces the spread of infections and connects people to a path to recovery; and Volunteers of America Youth Resource Center Program Manager Carlos Garcia discusses substance use among Utah’s homeless teens.

Moab City Police officer Reuben Badger collected a used hypodermic syringe out of a bush near the sidewalk on 100 North on Nov. 27. [Photo by Ashley Bunton / Moab Sun News]

MDP collecting discarded syringesas use increases

“Such programs have both operational and political considerations which must be understood and supported prior to implementation,” Winder said. “We at the Moab Police Department would be pleased and anxious to engage in any conversations and programs to address what is a very real and expanding problem.”

Dead for 6 Minutes After Overdosing, Price Woman Finds Her Purpose

“It hurt so bad,” she said while pointing to the side of her face. “It shattered this cheek bone, broke my nose, and decimated the cartilage in my ear. And I knew exactly where I could go to get heroin.”

“a panel gathered to answer the community’s questions and discuss their plans to thwart the ongoing opioid epidemic. On this panel were representatives from the Southeastern Utah Association of Local Governments (SEUALG), C.A.R.E Coalition, Four Corners Behavioral Health, USU Extension, the HEART Initiative, Southeastern Utah Health Department, One Voice Recovery, CRAFT Family Support Group and an internal medicine and addiction physician, who was also a professor at the University of Utah.”

Spencer Austin, chief criminal deputy for the Utah Attorney General's Office, left, Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, Sen. Mike Lee and Brian Besser, Drug Enforcement Administration special agent in charge in Salt Lake City, talk to members of the media at an Opioid Task Force meeting at the Capitol in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, May 1, 2018.

Op-ed: "We can beat the opioid epidemic"

"The Opioid Task Force assembled experts from diverse fields, including medicine, law, treatment, recovery, law enforcement and business. It includes physicians, pharmacists, legislators, local officials, educators, persons who have recovered from addiction and families affected by it."

(Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune) Anne Hazlett, Assistant to the Secretary for Rural Development for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, left, and Jim Carroll, Acting Director of Office of National Drug Control speak to a panel of rural Utah county and state leaders on opioid use in Utah’s rural areas, during a roundtable at the Utah Capitol on Wednesday April 11, 2018.

‘We’re dying’: Feds hear from Utahns fighting on the frontline of the state’s rural opioids crisis

“We need more capacity in these rural areas,” he said — including more treatment and detox centers. Residents in Utah’s rural areas who seek treatment often wait for days, and that delay, Rezac said, can mean the difference between getting clean and dying of an overdose.

Shunned By Some, Syringe Exchange Expands To Carbon County

Building bridges to Utah drug users through Syringe Exchanges

"In a hidden area of trees and brush along the Jordan River, Rezac and Larson came upon a tent. Inside is a 58-year-old man named Odie who said he suffers from addiction to methamphetamine and alcohol. He’s been homeless for six months.It’s a tough life, he said of his current situation. He is thankful, however, that Rezac’s team looks in on him. The syringe exchange is critical, he said.

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Alex Larson, left, and Patrick Rezac, right, Executive Director of One Voice Recovery, check in with Ivan Vasquez, 58, who is homeless and a heroin user in West Salt Lake recently. In an effort to curb the incidents of Hepatitis, HIV and STD's, Rezac's grass roots team hands out disease prevention kits and provides a needle exchange program.

Get those dirty needles off the street - Editorial

"such efforts are clearly much better than standing by and watching users compound their health risks by exposing themselves to not only illicit drugs but also to unintended consequences that could include HIV/AIDS or hepatitis. And, until we come up with the money and the effort — emphasis on the word “money” — to provide far more treatment options, standing by is exactly what we are doing."

(Steve Griffin | The Salt Lake Tribune) Steven Beach, a registered nurse with the Salt Lake County Health Department, administers a Hepatitis A vaccination at a mobile vaccination clinic setup outside at 500 west and 200 south in Salt Lake City Thursday November 16, 2017. The department is setting up the clinics to address the county's outbreak of Hepatitis A . There have been 66 cases here so far this year, mostly in homeless community.

Utah’s hepatitis A outbreak among the homeless is one of three big flare-ups around the country

"The state usually sees three or four cases annually. Now, at least that many cases are reported each week."

Patric Rezac examines a clients arm after she reported feeling numbness and pain in Salt Lake City on Thursday, Dec. 14, 2017. Patric is the founder and director of One Voice Recovery Inc., a nonprofit needle exchange organization that works in conjunction with the Salt Lake County Health Department to provide care for homeless and in need Utah residents.

He overcame drug addiction. Now he works to save the lives of other addicts on the street

“I think its absolutely devastating, ridiculous and absurd that people have to wait for a treatment bed,” says Rezac. “We have all these amazing private treatment centers in Utah, but only a small handful of options for people who are poor or uninsured.”

Billboard campaign works to prevent overdoses in Utah

“Sometimes that is a mom and sometimes that is a spouse and sometimes that’s even a child—anyone else who may be around someone at risk of overdose," said Utah Naloxone Medical Director Jennifer Plumb.

Sister Linda Bellemore of the Sisters of the Holy Cross comforting an HIV patient.

Utah's AIDS crisis, then and now: From one doctor in the 1980s to the U's new free clinic

"a historical documentary by Utah-based filmmakers Jenny Mackenzie and Jared Ruga, paints a heartrending portrait of sick patients with nowhere to turn, evicted from clinic waiting rooms by staffers who were afraid they could spread the disease or exiled by their families — some of whom refused to visit the hospital even as their children lay dying."